Unreal II: The Awakening
Unreal II: The Awakening is the fifth entry in the ''Unreal'' series. It was developed by the now defunct Legend Entertainment and published by Atari, and released on stores on February 4, 2003 for Microsoft Windows. It was later ported to Microsoft's Xbox on February 10, 2004. __TOC__ Synopsis Overview The game is described as a sequel to Unreal, though many of the story elements, including the characters and locations, are entirely unrelated to the original, and you get to progress through the missions as an entirely new character. The presence of the notorious Skaarj in modest numbers is probably the viable reminder of the Unreal universe. The player controls a former Marine John Dalton, a Terran Colonial Authority Marshal whose job is to patrol remote areas of space, which are far away from any real action. He is called back into service to retrieve seven pieces of an ancient artifact thought to make a powerful weapon when assembled. The plot follows a linear path like many other First Person Shooters, while the character goes to various planets in search of the artifacts. The level design at each location is also linear, with only a certain amount of puzzle solving and key finding. The environments on each planet are quite diverse, ranging from tropical to desert, bunkers and industrial installations, alien cities and even cavities inside the bodies of aliens. During several missions, the player must hold a location against waves of incoming enemies, in some cases using NPCs as support. Overall it is a short game, comprising only 12 missions. Development history The game was officially, yet quietly, announced back on October 14, 1998 by Epic Games. Primary development on Unreal II was performed by Legend Entertainment, with some assistance by Epic Games, and published by Atari Games. The official site launched in 2001. A version for the Xbox platform was done by Tantalus. Mike Verdu was initially the producer of the game, but left Legend near the end of the year, and was replaced by Glen Dahlgren. Plenty of stuff got cut during the planning stage such as voice over IP and vehicles. VoIP was cut early in the planning stage because it wasn't a priority, and with multiplayer being dumped, it never had a chance to be implemented. As for vehicles, the dev team believed that they should become part of the gameplay from the beginning, and U2 wasn't thought with vehicles in mind. The game was originally meant to be a singleplayer-focused game with multiplayer features, and was advertised as more of an adventure game than a casual blaster. Exactly a half of the game was cut from Unreal II. The multiplayer mode got cut in March 2002 in lieu of the then-''Unreal Tournament II'' (later Unreal Tournament 2003). The content that was cut include three races that includes nine or more enemies (N, Striders, Shian), five weapons (Tractor Beam, Stun Baton, Mind Claw, Shock Rifle and Flak Cannon), seven SP maps, around 10 multiplayer maps and several more multiplayer maps, various graphics, gameplay and sound technologies such as MP3 music player, Co-op support, multiplayer support, dynamic conversation system and armor changing. Before the release of the game, Dahlgren told BU that the game's version of UnrealEd won't be binary-compatible with the version of the editor which came with UT2003, so it's not possible to use the editor to create levels for UT2003 and viceversa. It was also confirmed that Unreal II and Unreal are set in different universes, and that there won't be a demo. Contradicting this statement, a demo for the game was finally released on May 1st, 2003, including one level from the campaign. Upon release, Unreal II utilized build 2001 of the Unreal Engine 2, at that time the latest version of the Unreal Engine; according to Mark Poesch, they dropped software support in order to embrace the capabilities of the higher performance cards at the time, aiming for full DX8. The game uses its own particle and skeletal system which is different from the one used in Unreal Tournament 2003. A lot of the arsenal in Unreal II is particle-based, allowing the dev team to create weapons and effects which weren't possible in the Unreal Engine 1. Unfortunately, according to Matthias Worch, the advantages on technology meant that it was very easy to get lost in the details, and one of the culprits was the TCA Atlantis intermission segments, which cut the action too much; according to him "it never quite felt like it was part of the same game" and due to the emphasis placed on the story, it distracted and took resources from other parts of the game that could have used the extra help (such as many missions that had to be scrapped). One of these scrapped missions, Solaris Base, was later released for free by Matthias Worch himself. The multiplayer addon eXpanded Multiplayer was announced in July 2003. The Demo for this addon was released on December 5th, 2003 and included one map, XMP-Garden. The full version of the addon was released for Unreal II owners. Upon release of the XMP addon, the game utilized build 2226. The game appears to use a different series of build enumerations from the base Unreal Engine, as the XMP release was described as build 6496, with patches to 6497 and 7710 (the latest patch). Release dates * February 4, 2003 - Unreal II release * December 9, 2003 - eXpanded MultiPlayer (XMP) addon * December 9, 2003 - Unreal II SE (PC) * December 9, 2003 - Unreal II SE (Xbox) * Unreal Anthology * Unreal Deal Pack Game content Gamemodes The base game of Unreal II is a single-player mission. A multiplayer addon was released in December 2003, known as XMP (eXpanded Multi-Player). Characters Weapons Items Vehicles Creatures Allies, passive creatures and NPCs Monsters and enemies Soundtrack Jack Wall (Tommy Tallarico Studios), Clint Bajakian (Tommy Tallarico Studios), Jeremy Soule (Artistry Entertainment), Crispin Hands (Artistry Entertainment), Brian Min (Weddington Productions), Chance Thomas, Richard Schneider and original Unreal composer Alexander Brandon are credited for working on the music in Unreal II. }} }} }} }} }} }} }} Reception While Unreal II received above average review scores from most of the major game news outlets, it was not received well at all. The most common complaints were that, while it looked pretty, the game did not have much depth nor any replayability to speak of. The game did gain somewhat of a cult following sometime after the XMP addon was released, however, this community focused more on the multiplayer aspect of the game, with the single-player campaign receiving very little time or attention. Most people dislike Unreal II in name only. The game had relatively little to do with the original game, including leaving out any characters, location, and most enemies from the first game. Some people agree that the game is fine as a game, but is not by any means a sequel to Unreal. Essential Files Here you can find a list of official and unofficial, yet essential, files for your game. Credits Trivia * During the Community Chat at BeyondUnreal, programmer Grant Roberts jokingly told the BU goers that he had an idea for "a 3D action platformer starring Ne'Ban called "Slug Saga: The Adventures of Ne'Ban"", but it was shot down quickly. * Jack Wall, who composed Unreal II's soundtrack, went on to compose the soundtrack for three games from BioWare: Jade Empire (2005), Mass Effect (2007), Mass Effect 2 (2010). Gallery !ConceptArt-U2-.jpg !ConceptArt-U2-Marines.jpg !ConceptArt-U2-Shian.jpg !ConceptArt-U2-Skaarj.jpg !PromoArt-U2-Shian.jpg External links and references * Unreal II: The Awakening @ Wikipedia * Unreal II: The Awakening (video game) @ TVTropes * Unreal II Sneak Peek website * Legend Entertainment website See also * Unreal * eXpanded Multiplayer * Unreal Mission Pack: Return to Na Pali